Why buy a jar of pickled jalapenos at the grocery store when you can make a home-made batch with peppers plucked from plants on your patio?

Pickled jalapenos are a favorite food around here and I usually have a store-bought jar at the ready to add to panini sandwiches, to top a pizza or to sprinkle on Mexican food.

But since gardening this year has yielded such a good chile pepper crop, I decided to create my own easy recipe for pickled peppers.

I mixed the recipe for these refrigerator pickled jalapenos by starting with the ingredient list from the back of the jar sitting in the fridge–and then adding my own ideas. I experimented with the quantities until the pickling brine tasted just right.

Before you start, please save yourself some pain and slip on a pair of plastic or rubber gloves to protect your hands and eyes while working with fresh peppers.

The truth about tomatoes is evident when tastefully arranged in a 1930s vintage glass bowl. “Scientifically speaking, a tomato is definitely a fruit.”

It’s the first of September and now that tomatoes are being eaten at every meal, it’s easy to say gardening here is just a bowl of cherry tomatoes.

The frustrations of a cold spring are a distant memory with such a bountiful harvest of tomatoes.

I planted 13 different kinds of tomatoes–and this fruit bowl is filled with 12 of them. The Giant Belgiums won’t be ready for a while.

On display here are Sungold, Crimson Carmello, Tomaccio, Sweet Treats, Supersweet 100, and Early Girl mixed together with heirloom tomato varieties Black Prince, Black Krim, Yellow Pear, Great White, Yellow Taxi, and Stupice.

It would be hard for me to choose a favorite from this bowl because all are delicious in their own way.

The hard work of sowing and growing is over around here and now it’s time to enjoy the chile pepper harvest.

One of my favorite parts of summer is when it’s almost over. That’s when gardening gets a lot more enjoyable because the hard work is done and the harvest has begun.

These days I’m having fun picking peppers off the plants on the patio.  It’s not the biggest pepper crop I’ve ever grown, but it includes seven different varieties and some are hotter than others.

In the photo from left to right are:

Casa Bella–This plant was a gift from someone who told me it grew small Jalapeno-like peppers that turned yellow. These cute little peppers are some of the hottest peppers I’ve grown–much hotter than Jalapenos. We like our peppers hot, but these are too hot to eat raw. When I add them to recipes, I only use one, remove the seeds and mince it like crazy. Once the peppers turn from yellow to red, they lose a bit of heat. I plan to dry the red peppers and then grind them into powder to sprinkle in soups, chili and other cold-weather fare.

If you’re looking for a way to attract more bees to your garden, plant a patch of Lemon Queen sunflowers and join The Great Sunflower Project.

In May I planted a packet of Lemon Queen sunflower seeds so I could be one of the citizen scientists counting bees for the The Great Sunflower Project. The project is the brainchild of Grechen LeBuhn, a professor in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University.

The project encourages gardeners to plant sunflowers and collect data that will help gauge the health of urban bee populations.

I’m one of about 50,000 gardeners who have signed up to plant and count. So far I’ve submitted the results of three observations.

I don’t know how many bees gardeners are counting in other areas, but I have to say, the bees are loving my Lemon Queens.

During each of my observations honeybees have landed on these sunflowers at nearly one landing per minute during each 15-minute observation.

Thanks to the Better Denver Bond Campaign–and Denver voters–the new Denver Botanic Gardens Greenhouse Complex is almost ready for its debut. This morning, the Gardens hosted members of the media to a sneak peek of the shiny new facility.

The Denver Botanic Gardens Greenhouse Complex opens to visitors on September 4, but if you’re a Denver County resident, you might want to wait until September 6 when you can get in for free. Marketing and PR director Robin Doerr told me the free day is DBG’s way of saying thank you to the community for approving funding for the project.

“We’re humbled in a time of difficult economic conditions to be able to do this,” she said.

More than $15 million was allocated for the major construction project that includes 50,000 square-feet of greenhouses, labs, offices, classrooms and other amenities. The exterior shows creative blending of existing structures–the Tropical Conservatory on the right–with the new Marnie’s Pavilion (left).

It’s time to start harvesting and donating your Plant a Row for the Hungry produce to a food bank, soup kitchen or food pantry near you.

This morning I spent time picking and packing 7 pounds of home-grown organic tomatoes and French yellow beans to drop off at The Friends of Saint Andrew in Aurora.

It’s taken most of the summer, but I finally had grown enough fresh veggies to play a small part in the Garden Writers Association national Plant a Row for the Hungry effort here in the Denver Metro area.

I called ahead and spoke with Sarah Norton, program director, to confirm the times volunteers would be there to accept produce and to ask the best way to package it. She said individual packets would make it easier for the volunteers to distribute, so I spent about 15 minutes packaging all sizes and colors of tomatoes and handfuls of long golden beans into small baggies.

Do you have a floriferous container you’re especially proud of this year? If so, you may want to enter the Zone 4 Magazine container contest. But hurry…the deadline for entries is September 1.

In June I posted a blog called Plant a Hypertufa for Small-Scale Gardening and I showed how to create a container rock garden. In just a few short months, the ice plant and mock strawberry in my hypertufa have filled in and spilled over the edge, just like I hoped they would.

I’m thinking of entering a picture of it in the Zone 4 Magazine container contest.

To enter just send a digital photo, with a description of the container and its contents, to the nice folks at Zone 4 Magazine.  Be sure to include your name, mailing address, email address and telephone number.

Zone 4 is a quarterly magazine based in Bozeman, Montana, and it’s one of my favorites. Every issue is filled with helpful information for gardeners trying to grow in difficult climates–like ours–and Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

Have an interest in Colorado’s native plants like this Pasque flower? Then the Colorado Native Plant Society annual meeting is an educational event you’re sure to enjoy. (Photo and information provided by Autumn Hummel, CNPS)

The Colorado Native Plant Society’s (CNPS) annual meeting is taking place September 10-12 on the Auraria Campus in Denver and all plant enthusiasts are invited to attend.

“Colorado Collage: Inspecting and Protecting our Special Places” is the theme for this year’s meeting.

Events begins on Friday night with a Rare Plants Symposium and opportunity to meet CNPS members and guest speakers.

Saturday features an impressive line-up of speakers including a keynote presentation by Steve O’Kane called “Boot Laces and Uncommon Places.” Dr. O’Kane is a biologist at the University of Northern Iowa.

Presentations will cover native plants and plant communities across the state, from the north to the southeast; from Gateway Palisade State Natural Area to The Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Did you plant and grow any flowers, vegetables or herbs from Renee’s Garden seeds this year? If so, you can enter Renee’s 7th Annual Photo Contest and receive more seeds.

I’m having a hard time deciding which vegetable pictures to submit to Renee’s Garden for the gardening photo contest this year. Everything I planted did so well this year, including these round baby carrots called Romeo.

If you planted any of Renee’s Garden seeds, now’s the time to take a picture of the flowers, herbs or veggies and enter the contest. Every entry receives a free packet of seeds and a chance at a $50 gift certificate.

In addition to the main contest, there’s a special kid’s garden contest, too, for anyone under age 16.

For more information about the photo contest, visit Renee’s Garden website.

Renee’s Garden is known for its high-quality seed and every year the company offers a number of new flower and vegetable varieties.

These Atlas “Touch” Gloves are my first pair of gardening gloves to last an entire season of heavy-duty use.

Can you imagine how many pairs of gardening gloves I’ve worn out in a lifetime of gardening chores? I couldn’t begin to count them.

Any gloves that didn’t get worn out, probably weren’t worn. Like most gardeners, I start out with my gloves on, but about halfway through the gardening tasks I take them off. Sometimes it’s to get a better grip on a teeny-tiny weed or it’s because the gloves start to feel uncomfortable.

Then I forget to put the gloves back on.

However, that changed this season when I found the super-duper durable Atlas “Touch” Gloves.

I’ve put these gloves to the test throughout this spring and summer. They aren’t as attractive as they were they day I got them, but they’re still in one piece and the fit is just like wearing a protective second skin.